Home Life 



able to fly. By way of apology for such neglect it 

 is said that a drake retires necessarily to shed his- 

 wedding garment, and that by the time the duck- 

 lings' education begins their father is apt to be so 

 denuded of feathers as to be not only useless, but a 

 positive drag on the family, since he cannot fly. In 

 very rare instances could this be true. One has only 

 to watch a hen care for her chicks to realize that 

 even precocial birds need the guardianship of at 

 least one parent. Devoted little Bob White, with a 

 fidelity rare among precocials, is a model husband 

 and father, volunteering to take entire charge of the 

 family, while Mrs. White sits on the second set of 

 eggs. When she leads forth the new brood to be 

 educated in wood lore with their more advanced 

 brothers and sisters, the bevy thenceforth enjoys an 

 ideal family life. Roving through the^grain fields, 

 underbrush and stubble, the large family party keeps 

 close together, especially at night when parents and 

 chicks huddle into a compact group, tails toward 

 the centre, one of the number always remaining on 

 guard to warn the sleepers of approaching danger. 

 Such prolonged devotion among the quail is the 

 more beautiful in birds closely related to the poly- 

 gamous, indifferent barn-yard rooster and to the 

 turkey gobbler, from whom his mate runs away to 

 hatch and rear her young lest they fall victims to 

 their father's fits of jealous, murderous rage. 



PROGRESS THROUGH HOME LIFE 



The more that the home life of the birds means 

 to them, the higher have they ascended in the evo- 



81 



